1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for automatically filtering a cooking medium in a cooking apparatus, such as a fryer.
2. Description of Related Art
Known fryers, e.g., open-well fryers and pressure fryers, are used to cook various food products, e.g., poultry, fish, potato products, and the like. Such fryers may include one or more cooking vessels, e.g., fryer pots, which may be filled with a cooking medium, e.g., an oil, a liquid shortening, or a meltable-solid shortening. Such fryers also include a heating element, e.g., an electrical heating element, such as a heating oil medium, or a gas heating element, such as a gas burner and gas conveying tubes, which heat the cooking medium in the cooking vessel. The amount of time sufficient to cook or to complete the cooking of the food product at a given cooking temperature depends on the type of food product which is cooked. Moreover, the cooking medium may be used during several cooking cycles before the cooking medium inside the cooking vessel is filtered, replaced, or supplemented with a new or filtered supply of cooking medium.
This process may require a plurality of tanks, each containing a cooking medium, and each tank having its own regulation system. Additionally, open-well fryers may use a manifold to distribute cooking medium to a plurality of cooking vessels in each fryer. Thus, in a known system, for each tank of cooking medium, a separate manifold and control system may be used to regulate the amount of cooking medium in a cooking vessel. This plurality of multiple manifolds and structures, e.g., piping, actuators, solenoids, and controllers, used to operate and regulate the manifolds, may add complexity to the fryer design.
Cooking medium may be filtered periodically to maintain cooking quality and to prolong the operational lifetime of the cooking medium. The filtering process removes cooking by-product, e.g., suspended food particles, ranging from dust-sized particles to larger pieces of crackling and small pieces of food product. Nevertheless, when this cooking medium is returned to the frypot, the filtering process may reduce the amount of cooking medium remaining in the frypot. If the amount of cooking medium drops below a predetermined level, then food that is cooked in the frypot may not be cooked completely or consistently, and the quality of food cooked in the fryer may diminish.
Referring to FIG. 1, a fryer apparatus 10 includes a known manual cooking filtering system is depicted. Fryer apparatus 10 includes a frypot 16 having an open top 14 for receiving a food product. A cabinet 20, shown without a door for illustrative purposes, has brackets 32 supporting a drain pan 30 having a filter (not shown). Drain pan 30 includes a handle 34 that allows drain pan 30 to be removed from cabinet 20 for cleaning. Drain pan 30 is fluidly connected to frypot 16 via a drain line 24 and a filter pipe 28. A filter pump 27 is positioned on filter pipe 28, for drawing cooking medium into frypot 16 from pan 30. Frypot 16 includes a drain valve handle 22 that operates a drain valve (not shown) for selectively permitting cooking medium to drain from frypot 16 via drain line 24.
Frypot 16 also includes a filter valve handle 26 that operates a filter valve (not shown) for selectively permitting the introduction of cooking medium to frypot 16 from drain pan 30. In a system with multiple frypots, each frypot may be designated for cooking a different food product, e.g., chicken, “french-fried potatoes,” and fish. The flavor characteristics of each of these food products may become infused to a greater or a lesser degree in the cooking medium. As a result, mixing cooking medium from frypots designated for different food products during filtering and replacement may adversely affect food quality, e.g., cooking chicken in a significant quantity of fish-flavored cooking medium may result in, e.g., “fish-flavored” chicken.
To avoid mixing multiple types of cooking media in a vessel, known fryer systems use an additional manifold to regulate the return of the cooking medium to the fryer from which the cooking medium was filtered. In the known fryer, this manifold is added to the system in addition to the manifold used to distribute new cooking medium to each frypot to maintain a consistent level of cooking medium in each frypot. These additional parts cause the fryer to take up a larger space than what otherwise would be necessary. Further, the additional piping and cooking medium routing elements require more cooking medium than otherwise would be necessary. Known fryers may have a large cooking capacity, and may require many liters of cooking medium in order to properly cook the various food products. Therefore, known fryers often are operated with less expensive cooking media, e.g., vegetable and corn cooking medium.
Nevertheless, in recent years, as demand for healthier food increases, food suppliers have begun to replace less expensive cooking media with more expensive, healthier cooking media. One such change is the recent demand for cooking media with zero trans fats. This specific type of cooking medium is more expensive than other known cooking media, and it may be desirable to have a system that uses a reduced volume of cooking medium.